I love organization tools centered on technology.
But more than the actual technology, I love tools that actually work–technology that saves me time, and allows me to allocate it towards living life. Still, I’ve found that many proposed organization solutions do the exact opposite.
When I say organization tools, I mean anything that helps anyone get stuff done. Period.
There’s already a ton of noise out their on the net. And everyone has “the best solution” to organizing your life.
I’m thinking of services like, email, calendars, contact management, to-do lists, groups, micro-blog platforms, rss aggregators, customer relationship management software (CRM’s), project management software, enterprise resource planning, and more. There’s even meta-organizers. Tools that help you organize your organization tools!
In the end. It’s just too much. It’s a joke. Like Lou Holtz of Notre Dame once said, “If you can’t improve upon silence, then shut up.”
There are just way too many proposed solutions out there to grasp. It’s easy for people become overwhelmed when looking up at the onslaught of tools proposed.
For a second, let’s focus on the project management arena. Like the big bang theory, when the first project management software was launched, it grew extremely fast and evolved significantly over time. Yet, did it evolve so much that most project management programs are rendered useless? So feature-rich that people stopped using them and gave up? Yes. Yes it did. And that’s where companies like 37 Signals arose. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, they succeeded in doing one thing extremely well: help groups get things done.
I’ve heard others call this lighter shift “Web Zero.” Simply put, it’s the process of cutting out all the fat of a product/software until you have absolutely nothing at all. This is exactly what Google does, and it can be seen in the finished product of chrome.
So will Web Zero be the next big thing? To some degree, yes. It’s not going to be a movement like Web 2.0, which captured a whole slew of websites and products; still, today it’s a niche-market that remains untapped. And any untapped market will see activity until there’s just too much activity. So, yes, Web Zero will be fairly popular in the next two years.
The reason why it’s not going to be extremely popular is because, (i) some may see a leaner product as inferior, and (ii) some people require feature rich applications.
For example, at law firms, attorneys pour through millions of documents a year. Most notable law firms have data-rooms with tons of features enabling them to sort through the colosal amount of data. Would the leading law firms throw their much needed tools away and subscribe to a 37 Signals product? Probably not.
The bottom line: Too many organization tools have focused on being everything to everyone, and not on doing one thing great. And, with that, it may be wise to reevaluate the product/software you’re trying to sell. Are you selling based on what your competitors have, or on what your customers need? Because if you’re doing the former, you may be making an epic mistake.
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